La Gloire! Or Rotten Luck RN!

Being without a game last Monday and not having any time to prepare anything myself my plaintive plea on our club Facebook group brought forward an offer of the Napoleonic Naval game Kiss me Hardy from John which I gratefully accepted.

This was a follow up to an earlier scenario which had resulted in the Commodore of a French fleet and his ship being taken by the RN.  However the French had managed to regain control of their ship but were now being chased down by their former captor.  Peter took the French ship and John P (the game organiser was John E) his British pursuer.

Meanwhile 3 French ships (mine) and 2 RN (Kevan) hastened to join the fight.

I say hastened but I actually made a rather leisurely approach.  The briefing suggested intense rivalry between my commander and his superior (Peter).  I played to character with the hope that sufficient damage might be done prior to my arrival to give me an edge when I got into combat and if my commander ended up being the most senior French officer present well so be it!

In fact John P made fairly short work of his opponent with a vicious stern rake inflicting a lot of damage and Peter was forced to strike.  I speeded up and detached one ship to go after John and sailed my other into action against Kevan.  Now I am no expert on sailing ships and benefited from a lot of good advice from the umpire and indeed my opponents as to what was and was not possible.  However I can (sometimes) roll good dice and started to get the better of my opponents.

The real story of the night was not my good dice rolls but John’s appalling luck.  When firing multiple d6s are rolled to hit.  At the same time a D10 is rolled and if the number on it is equal to or less than the successful D6 hit rolls special damage is done.  This can be pretty devastating with masts, officer casualties and even the magazine at risk.  However on a 1 a gun in the firing ship blows up causing damage on itself.

In the space of very few rolls John rolled special damage 3 times and then proceeded to roll a 1 on each occasion.  This together with other damage (including High Officer Casualties inflicted by myself on a special damage roll) gave him a 15% chance of failing a strike test.  You can of course guess the result of his roll.

So my commander had captured a RN ship and in the process reclaimed it’s prize (and unfortunately its captain) for France.  A change in wind and the advanced hour meant that we called it there.

Vive La France!

Games 60

 Rules played 24 New 9
Places played 10 New 0